Mark Ibrahim,
Christopher M. Danforth,
and
Peter Sheridan Dodds

Explore the paper:

Abstract

Apples, porcupines, and the most obscure Bob Dylan song—is every topic a few clicks from Philosophy?
Within Wikipedia, the surprising answer is yes: nearly all
paths lead to Philosophy.
Wikipedia is the largest, most meticulously indexed collection of human knowledge ever amassed.
More than information about a topic, Wikipedia is a web of naturally emerging relationships.
By following the first link in each article, we algorithmically construct a directed network of
all 4.7 million articles: Wikipedia's First Link Network.
Here, we study the English edition of Wikipedia's First Link Network for insight into how the many
articles on inventions, places, people, objects, and events are related and organized.

By traversing every path, we measure the accumulation of first links, path lengths,
groups of path-connected articles, cycles,
and the influence each article exerts in shaping the network.
We find scale-free distributions describe path length,
accumulation, and influence. Far from dispersed, first links disproportionately accumulate
at a few articles—flowing from specific to general and culminating around fundamental notions such as
Community, State, and Science.
Philosophy directs more paths than any other article by two orders of magnitude.
We also observe a gravitation towards topical articles such as
Health Care and Fossil Fuel.
These findings enrich our view of the connections and structure of
Wikipedia's ever growing store of knowledge.